"Cost of living crisis" nonsense

lvader

Tancred wrote: »

Labour didn't screw up the economy, it was the bankers stupid!

The bankers didn't increase government spending to the point that even during boom years they still had to borrow huge sums of money. Bankers didn't create a welfare system that meant you could be better off not working at all. Bankers didn't get us into very expensive and highly dubious wars that we are still trying to fully extract ourselves from.

CLAPTON

lvader wrote: »

The bankers didn't increase government spending to the point that even during boom years they still had to borrow huge sums of money. Bankers didn't create a welfare system that meant you could be better off not working at all. Bankers didn't get us into very expensive and highly dubious wars that we are still trying to fully extract ourselves from.

well as you already know the spending by the government in 1997 was about the same as the government in 2007 (% of GDP)

as you know the Tories in 2007 were promising to match labour spending

as you already know most of the bank bail out money was simply printed

lvader

CLAPTON wrote: »

well as you already know the spending by the government in 1997 was about the same as the government in 2007 (% of GDP)

as you know the Tories in 2007 were promising to match labour spending

as you already know most of the bank bail out money was simply printed

Labour should have seem that the GDP growth from increased government spending, cheap credit and MEWing isn't sustainable. Unfortunately they still believe you can solve debt issues by borrowing more. They have't learned anything.

lvader

Buddy4me wrote: »

In case you hadn't noticed the deficit is growing under this Govmt and by the way the tories supported those wars and wanted even greater deregulation of the banking system.

When you mess things up as much as Labour did, it takes at least a decade to recover, probably longer. The Tory's supported that Iraq war based on dodgy reports from the Government.

lvader

Buddy4me wrote: »

Name me one occasion when the tories warned the Labour Govmt of what was happening???
Fact is no-one knew except a few individuals. The current lot are just as culpable. Its just that they were not in office when the music stopped!

The argument over spending in 2005 was Labour accusing the Tories of wanting 50bn in spending cuts on the basis that Labour was budgeting on 5% annual spending increases for the next 5 years and the Tories only 4%. How mad is that?

CLAPTON

lvader wrote: »

The argument over spending in 2005 was Labour accusing the Tories of wanting 50bn in spending cuts on the basis that Labour was budgeting on 5% annual spending increases for the next 5 years and the Tories only 4%. How mad is that?

you mean the tories were mad wanting 4% increase in spending?

lvader

CLAPTON wrote: »

you mean the tories were mad wanting 4% increase in spending?

Mad that it got so silly that Labour was calling 4% increase every year for the next 5 years a cut, at the time when inflation was around 2%. By the way labour was warned by the Tories, EU and the IMF about reckless increases in government spending as early as 2001.

Graham_Devon

I find this tory vs labour stuff amusing.

Reason being, if the last 5 years hasn't proved that both the tories and labour are pretty much the same and will do the same things for the same people, I don't know what else would do it.

They are pretty much identical. Sure, they disagree and argue when on opposing sides, but labour have just come up with a plan mirroring everything they slammed the tories for when it comes to benefits.

The tories slamed labour for overspending, and what have they done? Overspent. They haven't fixed anything they said labour did wrong.

The two are one of the same. Look at housing, both won't build, both prefer extended lending and schemes put in place. Look at immigration, they are pretty much at one, though will argue until they are blue in the face they are different.

In my mind, all we have at the moment is two different parties trying to get the same vote. The parties are fundementally the same, bar what they say. What they do however, is another matter....and it seems what they do is the same thing.

We;ve had labour coming up with policies and then changing them to match whats already happening since the general election. We've had the tories, since the general election carrying on everything labour did (pretty much).

Fella

Ooh I disagree. I think that was much nearer the truth when Blair was PM but Labour under Miliband are far more to the left than previously. Nulabor's entire strategy revolved around repositioning themselves as not an enemy of business owned by the Unions etc. Miliband is doing everything he can to go back to the Labour party of the 70s. Declaring war on banks, energy companies, & raising the top rate of tax being just a few examples. I think the parties are much more polarized than for years.

SGE1

Fella wrote: »

Read post #11

I did.

Still not clear though - you seem to take issue with the terminology ("meaningless phrase") but then you also say that a higher cost of living is inevitable, and therefore anyone taking a stand on the basis of it is an idiot. Either way, I don't really care anymore - you come off as a zealot pushing your own biased agenda, rather than someone attempting to initiate a sensible debate about the extent to which the labour campaign is based on fact/fiction.

By the way, I don't think the current cost of living is inevitable - the Government could have taken steps over the last 3 years to mitigate the downward pressure on wages (e.g. not freezing public sector pay, not squeezing benefits) and conversely mitigated the upward pressure on prices (e.g. not increasing VAT to 20%, doing something sooner about so many dysfunctional markets that tend to rip consumers off, inc financial services / insurance, utilities etc.).

There are obviously reasons why the Government didn't do these things, and perhaps some of those reasons are sensible (the tory v labour chat is really quite boring), but it's difficult to say that the situation we're in is in any way "inevitable". The only trajectory that could be considered inevitable is that of private sector wages - but that's not even half of the cost of living equation.